Swami Kriyananda
Paramhansa Yogananda was on a visit to Lake Chapala in Mexico with his student, an engineer. “We stood together in silence,” Yogananda related. “My inspiration was the contemplation of God’s beauty in Nature. I attributed my friend’s silence to the same cause. And then he exclaimed, “Just think of all the power you could get from this much water!” “The view before us was the same. It was our outlook that differed.”
“Circumstances,” Yogananda continued, “are always neutral. It is our reaction to them that gives them their meaning for us, making them appear either good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, useful or beautiful.” What does art define for us? Our feelings, primarily. Feeling is seldom a deduction. It is a different faculty of understanding from the intellect. In its own way, it is as important as the intellect.
The mere fact, for instance, that the galaxy we live in contains billions of stars, and the universe as many billions of galaxies, hasn’t any meaning for us unless that abstract knowledge generates some reaction in us on a feeling level. Understanding is not synonymous with knowledge. It is born of the feeling awakened in us in response to knowledge: the sense of awe, perhaps, or of expanded awareness. Ignorance, by contrast, is not so much a lack of factual knowledge as an exaggerated reaction to whatever facts we know: a reaction of fear, perhaps, or of isolation, with a resulting inward contraction upon the ego.
Feeling, then, is of two kinds: calm and impersonal on the one hand, and emotional on the other.
DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing."
Courtesy: Economic Times, Speaking Tree, 26th July 2018
Swami Kriyananda
Paramhansa Yogananda was on a visit to Lake Chapala in Mexico with his student, an engineer. “We stood together in silence,” Yogananda related. “My inspiration was the contemplation of God’s beauty in Nature. I attributed my friend’s silence to the same cause. And then he exclaimed, “Just think of all the power you could get from this much water!” “The view before us was the same. It was our outlook that differed.”
“Circumstances,” Yogananda continued, “are always neutral. It is our reaction to them that gives them their meaning for us, making them appear either good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, useful or beautiful.” What does art define for us? Our feelings, primarily. Feeling is seldom a deduction. It is a different faculty of understanding from the intellect. In its own way, it is as important as the intellect.
The mere fact, for instance, that the galaxy we live in contains billions of stars, and the universe as many billions of galaxies, hasn’t any meaning for us unless that abstract knowledge generates some reaction in us on a feeling level. Understanding is not synonymous with knowledge. It is born of the feeling awakened in us in response to knowledge: the sense of awe, perhaps, or of expanded awareness. Ignorance, by contrast, is not so much a lack of factual knowledge as an exaggerated reaction to whatever facts we know: a reaction of fear, perhaps, or of isolation, with a resulting inward contraction upon the ego.
Feeling, then, is of two kinds: calm and impersonal on the one hand, and emotional on the other.
DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing."
Courtesy: Economic Times, Speaking Tree, 26th July 2018